


Visions of a Successor

by devilinthedetails



Series: The Voice [4]
Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Bazhir, Bazhir Culture, Bigotry, Future, Gen, Hatred, Prejudice, Trust, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25941295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Ali has a vision of a northern successor, and it disturbs him.
Series: The Voice [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1881097
Kudos: 7





	Visions of a Successor

Vision of a Successor

Ali was the Voice and had been for months now. In the sacred ceremony that had transformed him into the Voice, he had heard the millions of Bazhir, living and dead, crying out to him for comfort and understanding, each screaming to be acknowledged first. He had seen his ancestors back a thousand generations cross the Inland Sea to find refuge in this land that had once been green. 

He had watched as the Nameless Ones, so radiantly beautiful on the surface but ugly and rotten as overripe fruit on the inside, had bewitched his people into slavery. He saw how his people came to see the invisible, magic shackles that bound them to the Nameless Ones. He saw how they scorched the verdant landscape into red sand and dunes, raining fire down from the sky to destroy the Nameless Ones—to confine the ghosts of their evil to the Black City. He watched as his people built Persopolis stone by stone to guard Black City to ensure the Nameless Ones never emerged from it to haunt them again. He saw generations of Voices keeping vigil over Black City from the Sunset Room as dusk settled over the desert. 

He had seen all of that, and none of it had frightened him, because it was the past and what he had expected to see. It was the future—what he hadn’t expected to see—that frightened him. He had been disconcerted by the sight of his own death in the ceremony that would make his successor the Voice, but that hadn’t been what frightened him. What froze his blood in his veins and gave him recurring nightmares. It had been the wide, bright sky eyes of his successors that had chilled him body and soul. The wide, bright sky eyes in the pale moon face of a northerner.

Ali, leaning on the rampart wall overlooking the Persopolis castle courtyard where northern children waged war against each other with shouts and wooden swords, tried to imagine one of them as his successor. 

To Majid ibn Najm, who stood beside him as he had since Ali began his training so many years ago, he remarked, “Northern children don’t play well with others, do they?” 

It began young in the northern children, Ali decided, that endless, aching desire to conquer—to subjugate—at all costs. It made it hard not to hate and distrust them with every bone in his body. 

“Someone watching our boys learn to ride into battle and shoot arrows at their enemies might say the same.” Majid squinted into the sun as if it were the distant past. “Nobody knows better than the Voice, who must resolve all their squabbles, how the Bazhir struggle to play well with others. It was the Bazhir refusal to play with others that created the infighting which provided King Jasson the opportunity to conquer this desert. The Bazhir couldn’t build an empire and instead became part of someone else’s because we were too proud, too stubborn to play well with others. It’s in our blood, woven into the fabric of our being, not to play well with others.” 

Ali’s forehead knotted. It was troubling to think of his people as being conquered—being subjugated—by an empire because they refused to cooperate with one another. He didn’t know how to handle that notion nonetheless shape a reply to it. 

Changing the subject as desert winds might shift, he commented instead, “When I became the Voice, I had a vision of my successor.” 

“That is not uncommon.” Majid offered a sage nod. “Many Voices experience such a vision upon being made Voice. I saw you when I became Voice, and the moment I first looked deep into your eyes, I knew that I had find you, my successor. I recognized your eyes and your spirit from my vision.” 

“In my vision, my successor had eyes blue as an oasis.” The sweat on Ali’s spine made him shiver. 

“Among our people, blue eyes once were seen as a ward against evil.” Majid folded his fingertips together, pressing his lips against them contemplatively. “People would paint blue eyes and hang them above tent flaps to protect against evil entering their tents.” 

“I’ve never seen anyone with blue eyes who wasn’t a northerner.” Ali wanted to spit on the stones beneath his feet as he spoke of the northerners and what they had done to the desert. “They never brought any protection against evil to the Bazhir. All they brought to the Bazhir was evil, violence, and destruction. The northerners aren’t to be trusted any farther than they can be thrown against the wind in a sandstorm.” 

“After all these years in Persopolis, you still believe that?” Majid’s question was weary and almost disappointed as if he were somehow disheartened that long exposure to the northerners hadn’t leached this hatred, this distrust from Ali. 

“More than ever.” Ali’s chin lifted. He had seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears how Lord Martin who ruled the desert despised and distrusted the Bazhir. That was unlikely to inspire any thawing of Ali’s own hatred and mistrust of the northerners. 

“Hatred cannot drive out hatred, and distrust cannot be a foundation for trust, Ali.” Majid’s words were a strange echo of Ali’s thoughts. “You will know your successor when you gaze deep into his eyes just as I knew you. You will not be able to defy your destiny any more than your successor will be. Let us leave it at that for now and not poke at the matter further.” 

Majid was long dead, his ashes scattered in the winds over the sand dunes, when Ali came face-to-face with the successor from his vision for the first time. It was a shock to gaze into the deep blue eyes of the northern prince and see the eyes from his vision. The blue eyes would have been charming, Ali thought, if King Jasson’s eyes of the same hue hadn’t seduced with false, broken promises so many tribal chiefs into taking up arms against their fellow Bazhir. With that history of lies living and breathing inside him, Ali found it hard to choose to trust in his vision, which meant choosing to trust in this northern prince who so resembled the man who had ruthlessly sought to conquer the desert and subjugate the Bazhir. 

Looking into Prince Jonathan’s oasis eyes, Ali had to fight not to see the shadow of King Jasson looming over him—over them all. He had to will himself to see instead how his fate and his future as well as those of his people were entwined to the flesh and blood of this northern prince. He had to force himself to trust in his vision and believe in this northern prince he had just met, having faith that he would one day be his successor, the one that could reconcile the north and the south in his person. 

The northern prince wasn’t ready to begin his training, Ali recognized that at a glance, but some day he would be. Ali also recognized that as a glance. For now, both he and the prince had time to grow and to learn before they met again beneath the blazing sun that revealed all things.


End file.
